


Once Upon A

by orphan_account



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: F/M, Sibling Incest, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 04:57:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17196941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: It would almost be something out of a fairytale, if he were anyone else. If she were anyone else.





	Once Upon A

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sebfish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sebfish/gifts).



> Thanks to C for the look over and for thinking I could do this, even when I didn't.

It would almost be something out of a fairytale.

Taylor is born, and Sid's timer hits zero.

Taylor is born, and Sid knows right away; watches her name scrawl itself across the soft inside of his elbow.  
There were so many ways to find your soulmate--so many ways to define who and when--and Sid had almost all of them. His mom was so proud, when she explained how strong it meant his bond would be. 

He meets Taylor when she's three hours old, pink and still unhappy to be in the world, and he knows, the way they always said he would. His fingers shake when he brushes them over her soft head, her wispy hair, and he knows in a way that he's only ever known hockey, that she's his.

Taylor opens her eyes, and they're blue. 

"Oh," he says, because he's too young to have the right words, "Hi, baby."

It would almost be something out of a fairytale, if he were anyone else. If she were anyone else.  
In the hospital bed, their mother starts to cry.

\---

They say Taylor has colic, and Sid spends his summer hovering at the door to her tiny nursery, listening to her cry until she exhausts herself. His parents are exhausted, too. They all are.

He shoots pucks at the dryer, still listening to her screams. She's so little and so angry, her lungs better than any of the other kids on his team when they have to skate all across the ice. He wants to run away, and he wants to run closer, but the thing he's really learned the last few months is that only one of those is the right thing to want.

His dad sits back against the basement wall with a sigh, his left knee cracking when he goes down. Sid's been told by a lot of people that he's tiring, but he's never seen either of his parents like this. 

He makes three shots, and misses four, and his dad says, "I know it's a lot, bud." He means the crying, Sid is pretty sure, having a baby in the house, maybe. The way everything smells a little bit like powder and sour milk. 

He probably doesn't mean the way their mom looks like he's broken her favorite coffee mug every time Sid is in the same room as the baby.

"She's got a puck on her hand," Sid says, and feels a little bit like he's talking back. Feels a lot like he's saying something he shouldn't. He's not a baby, he knows what it means, how it goes with the hockey stick he was born with on his. 

"Maybe hockey is your soulmate." It's an old joke between them. Sid doesn't laugh; he just wishes, then feels like he's insulting Taylor to even want it a little. He knows his parents do wish it though, and it makes it hard to breathe.

Taylor's crying, still, and Sid wants to, too.

"I can make it better," he says, stubborn. "You know I can."

His dad looks surprised though, the way he looks when Sid says he should get to play with the older kids, and Sid knows he's little, but he can prove it. He can prove whatever he needs to. His dad's knee cracks again when he stands up--he doesn't hide the way he winces, not the way he's taught Sid to do. "There are different kind of bonds," he says, like Sid doesn't know that already. But he takes Sid's hand, the one has Taylor's mark on it, and leads him up the stairs.

Taylor is heavy, when he finally gets to hold her. She's red-cheeked and fever warm and quiet. She hiccups, once, and curls her tiny fingers around his thumb. 

"There are different kinds of bonds," their dad says again, quietly, his arm around their mother. He talks into her hair, but Sid can't really pay attention to anything but Taylor as he wipes her eyes dry. "Maybe it's a healing one."

"It's not." Their mom sighs, deep and disappointed. Sid holds Taylor a little tighter, just in case, but she must be too tired to fight. "That'd be easier."

\---

Taylor turns four and wears a blue dress to her birthday party, smug because she has friends who only see it in grey. She's a little too smart, and a little bit mean, and Sid loves her endlessly.

\---

Sid reads her stories on nights when he's home, and it's usually enough to make it possible for them to be apart when he's not. He doesn't know how much she understands the way it feels when the marks on their hands come together when he walks her across the street, but he thinks she understands this, the calm they only have when they're curled up in the living room chair together, flipping through books as slowly as possible.

She has princesses on her socks when she kicks at his thigh. When she says, pointing at Cinderella, "I want to look like that at our wedding."

Sid clears his throat, looks at his mom and understands for the first time, what it is to feel trapped. "We're not getting married, Taylor."

"We are," she says, rolling her eyes. She puts her hand in the crook of his arm. "We're soulmates."  
He goes to boarding school in Minnesota, and it's the least surprising thing since Taylor's been born.

\---

Hockey is easy at Shattuck-Saint Mary's and in the Q, but it's the only thing that is.

He makes new friends, and new enemies, and tries to learn a new language. He does his work, spends every second he can on the ice, and he misses Taylor so fiercely it makes it stomach ache. He scores goals and curls his fingers into his palm, into one of her marks, and it's almost like he can feel her press back.

They say high school is hard for everyone, like everyone is expected to lead every team they're on in scoring while feeling like they're short a limb. He keeps his grades up, he trains until he can't think, and he misses her in a way that could suffocate him, if he let it.

He wears long sleeves to cover up his blank timer, but when spring comes around again, he can't help but shove them up his arms. Her name is covered, but he gets to see the way "miss you, squid" writes itself across his forearm with big unsteady letters.

She's not supposed to be his. He's old enough now to know that, to know it isn't right. But the universe spins on, and there's another sign he can't wash off his skin.

He writes back, underneath, “summer isn't that far away,” and it feels like the first lie he's ever told her.

\---

He goes to Pittsburgh and he misses her.

It's easy for him to turn down the C the first time they offer it, because he's used to waiting to have things that are meant to be his. Sid wonders sometimes, bruised from living his dream and still hungry for more, if maybe knowing isn't all it's cracked up to be.

He presses against her name on his arm, like it's another bruise to test. It's not, of course. It's so much deeper.

She calls him, because she always knows when he needs her to the most.

\---

He wins The Cup, but he still feels like he's waiting. He doesn't know what he's waiting for, exactly, what the last piece will be shaped like. But he knows what's missing is her. It's always going to be her.

She started playing hockey too, and late one night writes on their arms like a secret, “I thought it'd make me miss you less.”

Sid's learned the hard way though, that nothing makes that ache go away.

\---

He knows the concussion is bad, because he's wearing sunglasses indoors and wincing at the light. Because the doctors have given him more waiting than answers. Because he hasn't kept down food or climbed stairs without someone beside him for a week.

He knows the concussion is bad, because he takes something for his headache and wakes up too warm, with Taylor pressed in tight against him, and their mother sitting at the foot of his bed.

Maybe it's psychosomatic, but his sunglasses are on the table and he can open his eyes all the way, even with Taylor snoring softly into his shoulder. He wants to fake his sleep. Wants to float on not feeling pain for a few minutes. He knows he shouldn't. He's always known.

His mom squeezes his ankle through his comforter. "It's going to start getting worse, I think." She sighs, like she always does when faced with them. There's fate, or the universe, but there's also biology. "You better sleep while you can."

She was right, of course. Now and then.

It would be easier if what Sid and Taylor had was a healing bond. But that was never what they were meant to be.

\---

Taylor and his mom leave, when he feels on the upswing to normal, and he has misery redefined.  
"It's like withdrawals," Taylor tells him, speaking too softly over the phone. 

Sid can't name a part of him that doesn't ache. He can't even pinpoint a headache, through all the rest.  
It hurts them both for too long.

\---

Sid asks her, when they're up late whispering into telephones like it could ever be enough, on her seventeenth birthday, with too many miles still between them. He asks, "what do you want?" like it could ever possibly be that simple.

Taylor laughs, a little bit breathless and a lot brave. "I want you, Squid. I'm getting tired of waiting."

He says her name like he's just been checked into the boards. Sometimes, it doesn't help to know the hit is coming. Sometimes, all you can do is try to stay on your feet.

"I know," she says, before he can start to argue. "Everyone always talks about finding their soulmate, and how wonderful it will be. But I've known mine my whole life." She laughs again, too tired for seventeen, too hurt for Sid to stand. "There's never any stories about how hard it is to wait to have them."

He wants to give her everything, in that moment and the last one and the next. He'd give her anything, but that's not new by any stretch. He clears his throat, wants to hide his face in his hands. "Guess we'll have to write our own, eh?"

"Yeah, I guess we will."

\---

He doesn't know what he expects. He doesn't even know what he should expect, when he makes it back home for another too long summer. She greets him at the airport, and when he hugs her, when he has her in his arms, it feels like the moment painkillers kick in. Like tension he'd been carrying for so long he forgot it is finally released. Nothing has ever been harder than letting her go.

"Mom's been stress baking," she says into his shoulder, still wrapped tight around him. 

"Because of your driving?" Sid asks, big brother mean. He touches the end of her long hair when she turns away. Her shorts are going to give him bad dreams, or at least dreams he should feel bad about. He's spent a lot of his life trying to find the right role to play.

They're at baggage claim, and he's seen at least two people take his picture, and this is as close to alone as he's ever been with her. He might start stress baking, too.

"You joke now," Taylor says, voice sing-song with warning. "Guess it's good you're end of season skinny."  
He wants to say her name, wants to pull her close, wants to--

"Come on, slowpoke," she says, tugging at his wrist, at the place where he's had zeros since she was born. "I've been waiting forever."

\---

Taylor kisses him, their feet dipped in the water behind his house, and he could be struck by lightning and wouldn't be able to keep from kissing her back. There aren't fireworks, but they'd just pale in comparison.

Their mouths slot together, and some part of Sid that's been held back for too long slots into place.

He can't help but rest his thumb against his name on her arm, and she laughs when he sweeps over it. Says, predictably, "took you long enough."

Sid's never been brave like she is, no matter how much she makes him want to try. "I was waiting for you to decide." It's a bad reason, of course, he knows before he says it, but it's the best one he has for making her be the one to always go further. He was always hers though, in whatever way she'd have him.

"You're the damsel in distress in this one."

He thumbs at Taylor's jaw, turns her head to kiss her again--searching, but only for the way to make her gasp his name. The water at their feet is calm and endlessly blue. "How's it start again?"

Taylor scrunches her nose, already prepared to give up kissing for a fight. Sid can't imagine how he could ever love anyone else half as much. "This isn't the beginning."

Sid laughs, stupid and honking and happy. "It is now."

**Author's Note:**

> Keep it secret, keep it safe.


End file.
